The wording implies that choosing a non-copyleft license means not caring about sharing and improvements

[akdjka]

The way you present non-copyleft licenses is very, very incorrect.
I'm yet to see an open source project that wouldn't care about improvements. They all want contributions, but permissive ones choose not to try to force others to contribute (for various reasons).

[cobyism]

The three summaries on the landing page are there to highlight three common deciding factors that 99% of people choosing a license are likely to be primarily concerned with—they’re not meant to be exhaustive descriptions.

Can you be more specific about what you believe should be changed? What does the site say that is incorrect?

[akdjka]

The exact part?
"I care about sharing improvements."

There is nothing strictly incorrect in it, copyleft is about sharing. But non-copyleft open source is about sharing exactly as well, so caring about sharing should not be factor in choosing a particular open source license. And presenting a non-difference as a primary difference for 99% of people to base their decisions on is very flawed IMHO.

[tekkub]

Simply adding the word "enforced" or something similar (and perhaps less aggressive sounding?) might be all that's needed here. The real deciding factor here seems to not be encouraging sharing to happen, but rather mandating that it does.

Heck, maybe something like...

I want to ensure others share their improvements.

[cobyism]

Would something like:

I care about reciprocal sharing.

…be a more correct alternative?

[akdjka]

Well, IMHO 'reciprocal sharing' is a difference between open source and shared source, not copyleft and non-copyleft, so it's not any better.
'enforced sharing' is correct and better than anything that I've had on my mind.

[haacked]

Enforce sounds too strong. Makes me think this guy will show up at your doorstep and make you share.

How about...

I want to require that others share improvements

/cc @hoolio, @benbalter

[artob]

Perhaps 'mandate' is the word you're looking for, as per @tekkub's comment?

Mind you, there's not much point using the GPL if one isn't going to enforce its mandates. And the end result of that would indeed be that, yes, some men with guns will show up at your door if that's what it takes. So, 'enforce' is not incorrect.

[hoolio]

I want to require that others share improvements

At this point, it sounds like we're in agreement on the idea, it's just a matter semantics and whether "require" is different from "mandate" is different from "enforce."

"Require" seems to strike the right balance and seems more colloquial and understandable than the other choices.

[artob]

Right. However, the problem with 'require' is that it could still be considered a (somewhat unpolite) request, whereas 'mandate' carries enough of an official nuance to it to indicate a legal requirement.

[benbalter]

That's just wayyy to heavy. Besides, the next sentence reads "require others...". I think it's pretty clear. Especially given that we have ~< 6 words to work with.

The wording implies that choosing a non-copyleft license means not caring about sharing and improvements

Couldn't you also say that non-Apache implies you don't care about patents, or non-MIT you don't care about simplicity? It's what's your deciding factor.

I care about reciprocal sharing.

@cobyism that was the first pass ("reciprocity"), but that is a legal term of art that got flagged during review

I think it's fine as is, but to clarify, "I'd like improvements to be shared"?

[cobyism]

The accuracy of the statement should take priority, however one thing that I think is important design wise is that whatever phrasing doesn’t push the heading onto three lines:

[cobyism]

@benbalter Beat me to the concern about visuals. :shakes_fist:

[haacked]

Yeah, I'm fine with keeping it as-is. But here's one alternative that might keep in the spirit of the original while being a little stronger.

I want others to share improvements

[benbalter]

The accuracy of the statement should take priority

The site's priority isn't accuracy or comprehensiveness. TL;DR Legal and OSI already take care of those two checkboxes respectively. The top goal of the site should be to distill a complex legal decision down to its essential elements... making it as simple as possible for the developer looking to license his project.

[haacked]

After thinking about this some more, I want to highlight two things.

What @cobyism said, emphasis mine:

The three summaries on the landing page are there to highlight three common deciding factors that 99% of people choosing a license are likely to be primarily concerned with

And something @benbalter said:

The top goal of the site should be to distill a complex legal decision down to its essential elements

Wouldn't we all agree that the essential element, the primary deciding factor for most people who choose the GPS is not that they want to require that improvements be shared, but that they want the software to be forever free? The word "freedom" is all over their materials. I do agree, every license wants improvements shared.

So the question is, have we really captured the distinguishing essential element for the GPL in that description?